I believe that the conversation matters. If in the attempt to realize the reign of God on earth, we cannot engage one another in respectful and grace-filled dialogue, we might as well not even try.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Ordination Papers - "Jesus is Lord"

Here's another ordination question to run up the flag pole. What do y'all think?How do you interpret the statement Jesus is Lord as it relates to your calling and daily disciplines?

Most importantly, the statement, “Jesus is Lord,” means that other things are not. For his first disciples, claiming Jesus as Lord was an intentional jab at the Roman Empire, placing Jesus’ authority above Rome’s. “Jesus is Lord” means that in the priority list of my life, nothing comes before my relationship with God in Christ Jesus, not my job, my family, my personal comfort, my social status, others’ expectations, my own expectations – nothing. It means that I pray the Wesleyan covenant prayer, that I might be used by God for God’s service as God sees fit – full or empty, employed or laid aside, having all things or having nothing. I describe my calling to ministry as being grabbed by the shirt collar and dragged forward, with the admonition, “Come on, let’s get to work.” And while I resisted the calling for some time, trying to put other things ahead of God in my life, eventually the power of God’s liberating Spirit at work in the world swept me up, as it swept up Thomas in the presence of the resurrected Christ, leading him to cry out, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28) Daily, as I pray and study scripture, as I plan worship and prepare my lessons to teach, as I interact with people as a pastor, I do so in concert with my awareness that Jesus is Lord and has a claim on my life that no other loyalty can compromise.

Sounds good. But what about Christ's relationship to Creation -- to the Community or to the whole of humanity? It seems that your answer speaks only to your own relationship to Christ. When we speak of Christ as Savior, we speak of him as Savior of the world. How does "Jesus Is Lord" relate to Jesus as Savior?

Here's something to muddy the waters. In the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (a.k.a. the Septuagint, often abbreviated as LXX), YHWH--the Hebrew name for God--is always rendered as Kyrios, which means Lord. Knowing that the Apostle Paul would have used the LXX for his Bible, it follows that his statement in Philippians 2:11 "Jesus Christ is Lord" could possibly be understood as "Jesus Christ is YHWH". I know that smacks of patripassionism and modalism, but then again how do we know St. Paul would have agreed with the decisions of the Councils of Nicea, Constatinople, and Chalcedon?